The Rag and Bone Man's Daughter
by Sonnenkoenigen
Summary: Deak's last assignment before he joined the Order.


Don't own DGM, of course. Been sloppy about disclaimers lately.

* * *

Deak walked along the river bank, trying not to see even as he did his best to record. The evening air was filled with the stench of copper and the groans of men bleeding into the dirt and water, turning one black and the other pink as what was left of their lives trickled out of the stumps of their wrists and ankles. They were askaris, Ethiopians who had fought at Adwa on the side of Italy, and this was the example Emperor Menelik made of them.

Deak had seen this kind of thing before, and while some distant part of him considered pity or anger, mostly what he felt was contempt, not for the dying but for their killers. The only sin these men had committed was fighting for what they believed was right for their country. They were somebody's brothers, fathers, sons, and friends, no different from those they took up arms against, but when the axes came down, none of that made a difference. All that mattered was the lingering bloodlust in the orders of an implacable monarch whose greatest triumph was born from the worst slaughter Deak had ever seen.

In 1889, Ethiopia signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Italy, which offered concessions in trade and territory in exchange for financial and military assistance. On the surface, this was a standard agreement between weaker and stronger countries, but this treaty had a trap. The Amharic version said that Ethiopia had the option of communicating through Italy in its relations with other governments, but the Italian version said that such mediation was required. Ethiopia objected, but Italy insisted that their version was the correct one. Emperor Menelik, determined to rule his country himself, had gone to war.

The Italians seemed more amused than anything else, thinking that this primitive backwater would collapse under pressure, but things started going wrong even before the attack on Adwa began. Although the Italians initially made good headway, they took a serious loss at Amba Agli, and had to back off and regroup. Emperor Menelik did the same, and both sides sat tight, each waiting for the other to break.

As the apparent stalemate continued, General Baratieri, who commanded the Italian troops, argued for a withdrawal. Supplies were getting dangerously low, and the men were restless. The brigadiers, impatient for results, contended that a withdrawal would be worse for morale than a victory with high casualties, and insisted on pushing forward. The march began at midnight, the attack planned for 9:00 am.

The assault got off to a poor start. The Italians had inadequate equipment, and troops who were exhausted or unseasoned. Unfamiliarity with the terrain combined with poorly–drawn maps led to the three Italian columns becoming separated during the night march, destroying any hope of a coordinated surprise attack.

The Italians also overlooked the possibility that Ethiopia might have allies. Russia sent guns as well as advisers, and Ethiopia had been accumulating arms from other sources for years. While some of their troops were lancers, most were riflemen, and they outnumbered the Italians by almost six to one.

Even if everything else had gone right, the Italians could never have anticipated the conjunction of effective reconnaissance and Emperor Menelik's faith. The Emperor, a devout Christian, habitually rose in the wee hours for prayer, so when equally early-rising spies came in with reports of Italian troop movements, he was ready.

The Italians had been planning an ambush, but what they got instead was a massacre. Deak and Bookman, embedded with the Russian advisors, recorded it all.

Bookman estimated that casualties on both sides combined reached somewhere near ten thousand, with just as many wounded, and then there were these poor bastards, mutilated and left to crawl off and die like animals. Deak shook his head at the futility of it all. There had been other battles before, and there would be more in the future. Every sacrifice made on that day was in vain.

He heard a high, wordless plea from behind him, and when he turned, he saw a girl about his age picking her way along the bank, moving from body to body, bending over each one in turn. Her dress was too short and too tight in the shoulders, reduced to a state that reminded him of the landscape itself, ragged and stark, the few bits of color faded but so unexpected that they were startling. Her hair had been braided in thin rows about a hand's length back from her forehead, and the rest burst out around the back of her head like a thistle in bloom. Her skin was a rich black–brown, and her bare feet were covered with dust.

She jumped when she saw him and gave a small squeak, her hand covering her mouth, then she turned and broke into a run.

"Don't be afraid!" he shouted in Amharic. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She stopped, and turned again to look at him. "You speak our language?"

"Yes," he said. "My name is Deak. What's yours?"

She took a cautious step toward him, like a kitten advancing on a new, moving thing. "My name is Gabra. Are you Russian? You don't look Russian."

Deak smiled. "I'm not a soldier. I'm an historian." He didn't ask what she was, because he already knew. She was a scavenger, the kind that haunted battlefields looking for whatever last scraps of value could be stripped from corpses. A good wash and some bleaching in the sun would get out the worst of the stains, and then it could be sold to those who were too poor to ask questions.

"Can I help you with that?" he asked, reaching for the bundle in her arms.

She clutched it to her chest and blushed. "No, that's okay. It's not heavy. Are you going to write a book about this?"

"Something like that," he said as he followed her away from the stream.

"Well don't put me in it," she said. "I don't want to be in a book."

"Don't worry!" he said. "The book will be about the battle and the Emperor." He couldn't imagine who would possibly want to read about her. She was less than ink on paper, more like the paper itself, the surface upon which others wrote. Still, she had an elegant face and startling blue–gray eyes, and nothing he could do with her would count as interference in any way.

"I guess it doesn't matter what you write about," she said. "I don't know how to read. Where are you going?"

"Wherever you are, I guess," he said.

"I'm going to my grandfather's house," she said in a voice that implied a warning.

"Let me see you there," he said.

"I'll be all right," she said.

"You never know," he said. "Just tell me when we're within sight of your house. I'll make sure you get home safely."

"Okay," she said, although in truth there was nothing she could do to stop him from following if he chose.

"So you live with your grandfather?" he asked, falling into step beside her.

"My grandfather and my sister," she said. "The others are dead or gone."

"The war?" he asked. Wars the world over claimed many lives.

She shook her head. "My brothers were taken ill when they were young, and my mother died in childbirth. The baby died because there was no one to feed him, and he wouldn't take any milk. My father left two years ago. I think he went mad with grief."

"I'm sorry," he said, less out of sympathy than because it was the appropriate thing to say. Senseless death seemed to be the one constant in human life.

"Thank you," she said. "What happened to your eye? Was it an accident? Or a battle?"

He laughed, trying to deflect her interest, but if there was one thing he never talked about, it was his eye. "It was nothing like that! I've been like this for so long that I don't remember what it's like to have two eyes."

"You can see just fine with the one you have, right?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, with a grin and a look that swept her head to toe. "I can see just fine."

She nodded toward the cluster of huts on the outskirts of town, a slum clinging desperately to civilization. "My grandfather's house is there."

"Go, then," Deak said. "Perhaps we'll meet again."

"Yes," she said, giving him the first genuine smile he'd seen on her. "Perhaps."

She dashed off, and Deak let himself enjoy the view, not just her backside, but the sleek bare calves that European women weren't allowed to show.

He found Bookman in the room they shared, going through a mountain of paper. "Well?" the old man asked.

"Dead or dying," Deak said as he took a chair across the table, straddling it backwards. "You?"

"The Emperor won't be pressing his advantage."

"No surprise," Deak said. "If the Italians had waited a few more days, they would have starved him out. Now what?"

"They'll be negotiating another treaty, this one involving genuine sovereignty."

"Wise move," Deak said. Ethiopia might survive as a state, especially now Europe knew that even a little scorpion could sting.

"Indeed, so why don't you turn that chair around?" Bookman said. "These reports aren't going to read themselves."

"Looks like you're doing just fine."

Bookman gave him a hard swat to the side of the head. "You will do as you're told, you impudent brat!"

"Ow!" Deak turned his chair, rubbing his temple. The old man was small, but he was strong. "Sorry, gramps!"

"Shut your smart mouth and get to work!"

The next morning, Deak went back to the river, starting well upstream of the bodies, and was not surprised to find Gabra doing her washing. She wasn't the only one, but instead of the usual chatter that accompanied any chore women did together, they all worked in silence, diligently scrubbing away proof that they'd been robbing corpses. Most averted their eyes as Deak approached, but a few looked at him askance, including Gabra. Like the others, she had tucked her skirt hem into her belt, exposing not just her knees but a bit of thigh as well. She relaxed when she recognized him, but the grim sadness in her eyes didn't ease. "Why are you here?" she asked.

"I wanted to talk to you."

The others looked up, startled to hear a white man speaking Amharic.

"For your book?"

"Yes."

"I told you not to put me in it. None of us want to be in it."

"I'm not going to put you in it. I just want to know how things are in your part of the city."

"What do you think?" she asked as she scrubbed at a red-brown stain. "People died. Are the Italians are coming back?"

"No," he said. "I don't think so." He saw no reason not to reassure her, since nothing she did would have an impact on events.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Good." She wrung water out of a dashiki and put it in a basket. "Thank you for telling me that."

"It's no problem," he said. "Thank you for telling me about the rumor. It's useful for me to know what people are saying."

"Oh, there are others," she said as she waded into the stream with another garment.

"Like what?" he asked, sitting down on the bank.

"Like the Russians are going to take over now," she said, rubbing the stained fabric against a large rock.

"I heard that the Emperor was going to try to take back our lost land," another girl said, emboldened by Gabra's comfort with Deak.

"I heard that the Italians are going to pay a lot of money for the return of prisoners," an older woman said.

"Why is your hair that color?" a toddler asked. "Did somebody paint it?"

Deak laughed as the girl's horrified mother tried to hush her, and when he gently explained that no, it wasn't painted, he was born with it, the other women began to relax. If he'd meant them harm, he would have done it by then.

By the time Gabra had finished with her washing, he had a good idea of the mood among the Ethiopians themselves. They were jubilant, but they didn't understand the difference between expelling an overconfident invader and being the superior power. Had Italy done things differently, even such simple things as equipping and supplying their troops better, Ethiopia would have lost.

Gabra wrung out the last of her washing, then let her skirt down and hefted the heavy basket in her hands.

"Can I get that for you?" he asked.

"Well…" she smiled. "Thank you, but it's probably easier for me." She lifted the basket onto her head, balancing it comfortably with one hand.

It was so unexpected that it made him laugh, and yet he should have expected it. He had seen many African women carry heavy loads like this, walking upright instead of with bent backs as men did. "You're right," he said. "I don't think I could do that. Can I at least walk you home again?"

"All right," she said with a smile wide enough so that he could see that a few of her bottom teeth were slightly crooked. For some reason, it made her look like a tomboy. "Thank you."

He he asked her questions as they walked, and was surprised by her answers. She clearly led a simple life, but she herself was not simple, and the picture she gave him of the war was much different than what he got from the paperwork and from the men who made the decisions. Everyone she knew had lost loved ones, men who were too poor to have rifles but had picked up a lance instead. There was sorrow, but there was also pride, as if these men were heroes as instead of cannon fodder.

This gave him an idea. "I'd like to know more about people's lives here, ordinary people," he said. "That is, if you have some time…" It was complete bullshit, of course. Nobody cared about ordinary people, but people like to think that someone might.

She smiled. "Oh! I guess I could tell you. Perhaps after supper? I might have some time before I put my sister to bed."

Deak smiled back. This was perfect, just the two of them alone in the evening sun. "After supper it is then! Meet you here?"

"Sure!"

He watched her go, her hips swaying as she walked, then he went back to his quarters.

"Where have you been?" Bookman demanded.

"Talking to an informant," Deak said, pulling his boots off and stretching his toes with a sigh of relief.

Bookman snorted. "Informant! Let me guess, young, female, pretty?"

Deak shrugged and grinned. "If I'm going to talk to someone, they might as well be easy on the eye."

Bookman cuffed him. "You're supposed to be staying out of trouble."

"I will, I will!" Deak said. Hard to get into trouble when he was leaving in a few days.

"So did you get anything useful out of this informant of yours?" Bookman asked.

Deak leaned back in his chair and recited the stories he'd heard from the women by the river.

Between his records and the business of the Emperor, it was a long afternoon, and Deak was looking forward to spending time with Gabra. When he got to the outskirts of town, however, he found himself confronted by an apparition that would have been bizarre had he not seen it before and known it for what it was. It wasn't the man he recognized, it was the disease, leprosy. Bulbous, blistery scars left the man's face misshapen, and he gripped a cane in what remained of four fingers. Gabra held him up on the other side, her eyes downcast, her cheeks reddening as Deak approached.

Deak's heart sank. Silly girl that she was, she'd probably told her grandfather all about him, and her grandfather had decided to put a stop to it. Deak shook himself internally, thinking of how best to salvage it. "My name is Deak," he said as he got closer. "I'm…"

"I know what you are." The old man's speech was slurred by his malformed lips. "_Bookman_." He said it like an epithet and spat, missing Deak's shoe by half an inch.

Deak stepped back, stunned more by the use of his title than by the spit. "What?"

"Bookman," the old man said. "You're one of the tribe of Bookmen. You think yourself so far above us, with your records of human pain, forgetting that you yourselves were begotten of pain."

"What do you mean?" Deak asked. This conversation was so far outside his experience and training that for once he didn't know what he was supposed to say.

"You were an orphan, weren't you," the old man said. "Abandoned by mother and father, picked up by your master, a stray dog offered food, shelter, education, and a reason to think yourself better than you are."

Deak felt as if a giant fist had closed over his lungs, forcing the air from them. That was exactly what had happened. "How did you…?" He couldn't even finish his sentence.

"Do you think I was always as I am now?" the old man demanded. "I've met others of your tribe. You're parasites, attaching yourselves to people long enough to suck the blood out of their lives before moving on."

"Wait," Deak said, putting both hands up in front of him. "I didn't mean any harm."

"Do you see her face? Do you even understand what you see?"

Deak started to protest, and then realization dawned. Gabra had liked him, genuinely liked him, and not only was she disillusioned now, she was afraid. It would be a long time before she trusted another man who was kind to her. "I'm sorry," he said, aware that it was too little too late.

"Oh, don't worry about her," the old man said. "I have a match in mind already, the son of the son of a good friend. They know each other well and he's a kind boy, even if he's not as glamorous as a foreign historian who could take her away from all this. It's a little sooner than I'd planned, but if she's old enough to be looking at you, then maybe it's time. A few years of marriage, and she'll come to think of you as a mistake she didn't make. No, it's yourself you need to worry about."

"What do you mean?" Deak asked.

The old man pointed the stump of his finger squarely at Deak's chest. "I curse you, Bookman. I curse you with love, years of love that you dare not express. I curse you with love you could lose at any moment with no hope of being able to protect her. I curse you to find out that you have a heart only when it breaks."

It should have seemed foolish, this ragged old man pronouncing doom on a Bookman, but Deak shivered. "I'm sorry," he said. "I really am."

"No," the old man said. "You aren't. You're upset that you were caught." Then he smiled, hideous on that distorted face. "But you will be sorry. Soon, you will be very sorry."

Deak and Bookman left that night for Italy, to record the response of the Italian government in the wake of the disaster at Adwa. Not surprisingly, Baratieri had been stripped of his command and would be facing a court martial, but even that wasn't enough to stop the Italians from rioting in the streets. Relatives of soldiers stationed in Africa began sending letters to the newspapers describing the conditions there, fueling cries to bring the Italian troops home for good. More than the battle was over. The people of Italy were demanding a withdrawal from the last great race for colonies.

Deak logged it faithfully, but every time he was idle, his mind kept wandering back to Ethiopia. He'd been cursed before, by people far more powerful than Gabra's grandfather, but something about the old man was different, and Deak wondered who he'd been before leprosy had reduced him to a rag and bone man.

"Deak!" Bookman's yell jolted him back to attention.

"Wha…ow! What was that for?"

"You're Lavi now, you idiot!"

Oh shit! Maybe he deserved that after all. "Did I just answer to my old log name?"

"Get it together, fool!" Bookman said, his voice even testier than usual. "This is no time for carelessness. Your next assignment will be the hardest yet."

"What do you mean?"

"We've been sent to the Black Order. From here on, you'll be documenting the hidden war between mankind and the Demons*."

Deak—no, Lavi—sat up straighter. "The Black Order? Now? Why?"

Bookman's eyes narrowed. "Because a prophecy is about to be fulfilled, and we're the ones who will record it."

Cold fear congealed in Lavi's stomach, raising goose bumps on his arms, but the last thing he wanted to hear was that prophecies could be fulfilled.

* * *

*Regarding Demons/akuma: Any time a work is translated, there are sacrifices. I don't know why the decision was made to not translate the word "akuma", but when that was done, a lot of potential wordplay was lost. In order to regain that, I chose to translate "akuma" as Demon, capitalizing it to distinguish it from the kind of demon not made by the Earl. In doing so, I undoubtedly lost whatever was gained in not translating that word, but that's how translation goes. You win some; you lose some.


End file.
